The game is set on the Hollow Moors in the last winter of 1999: a high, wet, wind-scoured stretch of country loosely drawn from the moorland of northern England, with its dry-stone walls, its closed railway lines and its long dark winters. It isn't on any real map.
Five of you, daring each other to camp for the Halloween weekend.
Round here they're just the moors. The sign says the Hollow Moors, after something that's meant to be out there. Looks after the place, or haunts it. Nobody remembers which.
The first night was fine. Somebody's tape deck. You went to sleep last.
You woke up alone. The tents are still here. Your friends aren't. And the fog has come in like it doesn't mean to leave.
31st October, 1999
What you're up there to do
Sixty-two nights
01
Keep the fire lit
It is warmth, a place to cook and the only ground that is yours after dark. Everything out there keeps to the edge of its light. Let it go out and the run is over.
02
Bring the four home
Chris, Dan, Gemma and Claire are out on the moor somewhere, each stuck and each needing a hand. Find them, get them back to camp, and they'll chop, haul and mend while you're away.
03
Be at a fire at midnight
Sixty-two nights are left of 1999. At midnight on New Year's Eve the moor settles up, and anyone who isn't at a lit fire when the year turns is kept.
04
Then drive home, or don't
Chris's keys are in the tent and the car is at the end of the moor road, somewhere past the fog. On the first morning of 2000 the fog lifts off the road.
“A fire with somebody at it, they won't come near. A fire on its own is only a fire.”
What is out there with you
The lampers
When the fog comes down, the moor holds whoever is out in it. It has done it all century. The railway used to carry the kept away: the 18:10 took them one at a time, and the line crossed their names off a list. Then the line closed in March 1965 with four names still on it, and since then nobody has got off.
The ones it has held longest have gone over to it. They walk the moor at night with lamps, and anyone round here would call them what you call people out on a moor after dark with lamps: lampers. They are people. What they wear tells you roughly when each of them arrived, from the railwaymen's donkey jackets of 1965 to a fleece like yours.
1965The sixtiesThe seventiesThe eightiesThis year
What they want
Your fire out by midnight, and your four friends out on the moor when the year turns. They have come to believe the moor will let one of them go for every one of you it keeps. The closer midnight gets, the less they have to lose.
From the fog night they put up lamps on poles, closer to your fire each time. They lift your logs and put out your lights, and on a night when nobody is at the fire, they lead a friend away. Pull a lot of lamps down and there is paraffin under the sheet, and something somebody kept.
Under the sheet
A pay packet, week ending 5 March 1965. Still sealed.
A shepherd's tally stick, notched to forty-one and then no further.
A postcard: weather lovely, back Sunday. Never posted. August 1976.
A digital watch, still keeping time. The alarm is set for midnight.
A virtual pet on a keyring, still beeping to be fed. Nobody has fed it since August.
A dog lead. No dog.
The count
In the abbey tower there are names chalked down the wall, a column of them, and beside each one a second name in a different hand. At the bottom, this year: CHRIS, DAN, GEMMA, CLAIRE. The fifth line just says FIRE.
Rub a friend's name off with your sleeve and they won't come for them now. FIRE won't stay off.
Not everyone the moor keeps goes over. Set the signals off at Hollow Beck and the 18:10 calls with four lamps waiting on the platform. Four lamps go aboard, and there are four fewer out on the moor that night.
Who you came up with
The friends
Chris
Twisted an ankle out on the moor. It's Chris's car, and Chris's keys in the tent.
“Somebody came to the tent with a torch. I thought it was you.”
Dan
Shut in behind a gate that has jammed, and nobody on the other side to lift it.
“I heard a train. There isn't a train. I heard it anyway.”
Gemma
Stuck in the bog, waiting for someone to pull her clear.
“A man with a lamp said keep to the path. So I did.”
Claire
Trapped behind a fall of loose stones, and she has worked out more than the rest of you.
“There's people out here. They've got our names. One of them kept saying mine like it was his.”
The trader
A man who turns up a little way out from camp every few days to trade pelts, because you can't live out here on nothing. He keeps a fire of his own somewhere past the mist, and he has kept it a long time. He is the only one who talks to you plainly, one line a visit:
“Keep that going.”
“You'll have seen the lamps. Don't go to them.”
“They had names once. Same as you.”
“A fire with somebody at it, they won't come near. A fire on its own is only a fire.”
“Be at your fire at midnight. I'll be at mine.”
The lie of the land
Where it happens
Where the fire is
The hollow
A dip in the moor with a spring, dry ground and enough trees to matter. The tents are where you left them. The fog starts where the firelight stops. Out past it there is a bothy with a cold hearth, where a shepherd left everything he owned, down to the fire basket and the loom.
The old station, along the line
Hollow Beck
The line across the moor was withdrawn on 6 March 1965. The timetable came down and the disposal list went up, and the last four names on it were never crossed off. The eight levers in the signal box still move.
Put the signalman's card back together, set the signals off, and a train nobody has timetabled in thirty-four years calls at 18:10.
South, where the ground gives
The bog
Pools and reeds and one dry trail somebody laid down with a lot of care. Keep to it. After dark there are lights out over the water that nobody is carrying, and something in the deep pools waits for anyone who stands too close.
Past the far end of the bog
The abbey
Three tiers of pale stone and a tower through the middle, with the stairs still climbing to the top. The visitors' book is signed in five hands: back at dark, do not lock the gate. Something has been living on the top floor, and its guards wake when you climb to it.
West, where the trees close in
The western forest
Old wood, thick enough to lose the fire behind. Good timber, plenty of stone, roe deer at the edge of the trees at dawn, and more cover than anything else on the moor. The Hollow likes cover.
Halloween to the millennium
How the winter goes
31 October to 11 November
The weekend
The fire, the bench and the first friends home. Rockets go up somewhere over the moor on Bonfire Night, so the world outside is still there. On the seventh night comes the first siege, and nothing human is in it.
12 to 30 November
Lamps on the moor
On the fog night a lamp walks across the moor, stops facing the fire and goes out. More are lit round it. After that another lot goes up every few nights, each nearer than the last. The Leonids come over on the 18th, and on the 26th it rains from dusk to dawn.
1 to 24 December
They come
The frost comes, and so do the lampers themselves. The railway phone rings on the 3rd. On the 10th every light on the moor goes out in a ring closing on the camp. A message comes through on the pager on the 17th. On the 22nd the biggest moon anyone has seen comes up, and the Hollow walks out under it with the lamps beside it. Christmas Eve is the one night nothing comes, and somebody leaves a present by the tent, wrapped in newspaper from 1976.
25 to 31 December
The last week
A lot of lamps every night now. On the last night of the century every lamp on the moor is lit and coming this way. At midnight the Millennium Bug takes every light but the fire, and they come from every side.
1 January 2000
The dawn
The lamps are lying out on the heather, cold. The fog has lifted off the moor road, and Chris's car is down in the lay-by with the weekend still strapped to the roof.
From the back of the journal
In the dark
The moor's creatures come out of the folklore of the north. Each one is a silhouette in your journal until you've seen it up close. The ones the firelight keeps out stop at the edge of the dark and stare in.
The Hollow
Drags itself on two long arms and follows whoever wanders furthest into the dark.
It doesn't come at you. It lies up behind a tree or a rock and looks out. Turn your back and it crawls to the next cover, closer in. Stand still with it near and it draws itself in and comes. Look straight at it, or put your light on it, and it backs off into the dark.
It keeps away until you have held off your first siege. The morning after, somebody says that something older has noticed you.
It is the moor's own, and it fetches whatever is out past a fire. It doesn't hate you. Whether it looks after the place or haunts it, nobody remembers.
Boggart
A small shaggy thief. Leave anything out of the light and it is gone. Never give it a name.
They knuckle-walk in from the dark after whatever you've left lying about, and make off with it. Get between one and the dark and you might get your things back. Get too close and it springs onto your back, your shoulder or your leg and hangs on.
Old northern folklore has the boggart as a house spirit gone bad: a thing that hides your belongings and sours the milk. Name one and it can never be reasoned with again.
Barghest
The lampers' black dogs, dragging their chains. Seeing one was always a bad sign.
They were dogs once. Now they keep by the lamps, two to a lot, and come fast when a lamper whistles. Black as soot, dragging chain, and they bite from closer than you'd like. One leaves its pelt behind and nothing to eat.
In the stories a barghest is a black dog the size of a calf that walks the lanes at night. Hear its chain behind you and somebody in the house will not see the year out.
Peg Powler
Green hair and green teeth, waiting in the pools on the bog for anyone who stands too close.
She lies under the deep pools on the bog and takes hold of whoever stands at the edge. Pull away or hit her before the weed closes over.
Hob-lanterns work for her. On foggy nights there are lights out over the bog with nobody carrying them, leading off the trail towards the water. Walk up to one and it goes out.
A river hag of the north, blamed for children who went too near the water. Some call the lights Peg-a-lantern or Jenny Burnt-Tail. Nobody who followed one ever said what it was.
Shardback
Hunched and armoured in splinters of stone. Slow, and hard to put down.
It comes with the big nights, from the fifth night on and more of them with every siege. It is slow, and it gets there. The biggest lots of lamps have one watching over them, and they guard the abbey's top floor. It drops stone when it goes down, which is something.
Spoilers from here
How it ends
Keep a fire through midnight and the moor lets you go. Who gets in the car is up to how the winter went.
Five in the car
Five of you went up for the weekend. Five of you came down.
Every friend home, every name rubbed off the wall and a fire kept through the turn of the year.
Home
You drove home on your own. Nobody believed a word of it.
Whoever was still out at midnight isn't coming down off the moor. The card names them.
Stay and keep the fire
Somebody has to keep a fire up here.
Let the car go without you and the world goes on. The lampers are gone, the fog is only winter fog, and there's a smallholding to dig, then a campsite, then an outdoor centre full of kids up for the summer.
Kept
You were out on the moor when the year turned.
Away from a lit fire at midnight, with nothing to show you the way back.
And what nobody will tell you
What the Hollow is.
Where the 18:10 goes.
Who is on the other end of the railway phone.
Whether one of you for one of them was ever true, or just something frightened people told each other for thirty years.
